Bryn Mawr
Classical Review 94.06.18

RESPONSE: Sivan on Booth on Sivan (BMCR 94.06.04)

Response by Hagith Sivan, University of
Kansas

Anyone who writes a
book, especially one that proposes radically new interpretations, is
virtually asking for a critical response from members of the scholarly
community, particularly from those who represent the "current
orthodoxy". I was certainly expecting, even hoping for, a critical
evaluation of the theses which I presented in my book Ausonius of
Bordeaux. Genesis of a Gallic Aristocracy (Routledge 1993). But the
uniformly negative review of Alan D. Booth (BMCR 94.06.04) surpassed even
my own expectations for criticism.

At the
beginning of his review, Professor Booth states his primary and only
stated objection to my thesis as follows: "Charming touches and cute turns
of phrase cannot, however, conceal the weakness of the work's central
thesis, which depicts Ausonius' career at court as the epoch-making event
in the evolution of a Gallic aristocracy. This construction does violence
to fact and probability." Professor Booth subsequently concludes his
remarks by stating, "In sum, there is no reason to suppose that
fourth-century Gauls were hindered by imperial distrust from pursuit of an
official career" and that Ausonius "cannot plausibly be cast as a midwife
in the birthing of a Gallic aristocracy."

The borderline sexist
language gives pause, but let me press on to the more portentous question
of just what evidence does he offer to contradict the 219 pages that I
spent developing the thesis that "the dominant presence (of Ausonius) at
the Treveran court signalled a stage of maturity (for the Gallic upper
class) which could have been delayed had Ausonius not been there to open
doors readily and widely" (p. 140). In fact, no single example of factual
error is alleged in the review.

This leaves "violence
to ... probability", which is difficult to distinguish from violence done
to preconceptions." Booth states: "The hypothesis about imperial
reluctance
to charge Gauls with high office before Julian's time rests on a fragile
foundation, and Sivan acknowledges so much. One simply does not know
enough about the provenance of fourth-century dignitaries to claim that
Gauls were excluded from important office in any systematic way." Well,
not exactly. As I show (pp. 14-20), we do in fact know something about
Gallic appointments under the Tetrarchy and the house of Constantine --
and there is nothing to suggest that Gauls were normally appointed to
office, and especially to high office.

The most that Booth can
offer is two Gallic professors who educated imperial family members in the
first half of the fourth century and to ask: "If there was no imperial
bias against Gallic professors, why should there have been any general
imperial distrust of the graduates of Gallic schools?" But this argument
is doubly specious. First, one simply cannot assert with any confidence
that professors and high officials were chosen according to the same
criteria. To reduce this argument ad absurdum, one might as easily suggest
that the Greek schoolmasters in Rome in the first century BCE should have
been made Roman consuls. Furthermore, clearly all the graduates of Gallic
schools were NOT distrusted, for all were not Gauls, as Booth's own
examples attest.

The only other argument advanced against my
thesis concerns Ausonius' own career, when Booth states: "We need not
doubt Ausonius' own testimony where he indicates that such a career was
open to him as a young man". Elsewhere Booth comments: "Ausonius abandoned
forensic practice, which would have paved the way to office, and
consecrated himself rather to the teaching of grammatice. Since he spent
30 years in the teaching profession in an age where the ambitious found so
many avenues of entry to the imperial service, Ausonius may well be
telling the truth when he claims to have turned his back on an official
career. As he himself specifies in the Gratiarum Actio, his rise to high
offices did not follow the normal path whereby he would have entered
imperial service earlier in life, an option that seems never to have been
closed to Gauls specifically."

But Ausonius' apologia for pursuing
the career of a grammarian and rhetorician does not, in fact, give any
support to Prof. Booth's contention that Ausonius did so purely by choice.
The actual text reads (Praef. 1.15-18):

Nothing here to indicate that an official career was
"open to him as a young man". Nothing about a "normal path whereby he
would have entered imperial service earlier in life". Here, it would seem
that it is Professor Booth who is doing "violence to fact".

Indeed, a critic might well ask whether Ausonius was so lacking in
ambition that he languished in the teaching profession for 30 years by
choice. Surely his later career indicates that he was lacking in ambitions
neither for himself nor for other family members. If anything, therefore,
Ausonius' failure to hold earlier office, coupled with his ambition when
he finally did, offers support to my contention that Gauls prior to Julian
did not find an open path to imperial office holding.

In sum, I
am disappointed not so much because Professor Booth disagrees with me, but
because he fails to offer useful or helpful evidence or argument to cast
light on the disagreement. His objections are based on simple denial,
without any significant
reference to the wealth of evidence presented in the book. Nor does he
offer any alternative hypothesis. Given the tone of his review, I think
other readers than myself might have expected it to have more substance.